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91-854: In Scandinavia , beginning in the late 8th century, the script was simplified to the Younger Futhark , while the Anglo-Saxons and Frisians instead extended it, giving rise to the Anglo-Saxon futhorc . Both the Anglo-Saxon futhorc and the Younger Futhark remained in use during the Early and the High Middle Ages respectively, but knowledge of how to read the Elder Futhark was forgotten until 1865, when it

182-584: A loanword from the North Germanic languages ; " Skaði " is the jötunn stepmother of Freyr and Freyja in Norse mythology . It has been suggested that Skaði to some extent is modelled on a Sámi woman. The name for Skaði's father Þjazi is known in Sámi as Čáhci , "the waterman"; and her son with Odin, Sæmingr , can be interpreted as a descendant of Saam , the Sámi population. Older joik texts give evidence of

273-648: A brief but disastrous war between Denmark and Prussia (supported by Austria). Schleswig-Holstein was conquered by Prussia and after Prussia's success in the Franco-Prussian War a Prussian-led German Empire was created and a new power -balance in the Baltic region was established. The Scandinavian Monetary Union , established in 1873, lasted until World War I . The term Scandinavia (sometimes specified in English as Continental Scandinavia or mainland Scandinavia )

364-484: A modern and more inclusive demonym . In the ethnic or cultural sense, the term Scandinavian traditionally refers to speakers of Scandinavian languages , who are mainly descendants of the peoples historically known as Norsemen , but also to some extent of immigrants and others who have been assimilated into that culture and language. In this sense the term refers primarily to native Danes , Norwegians and Swedes as well as descendants of Scandinavian settlers such as

455-464: A name idiberug (possibly idiberun ), which could be interpreted as one of several names, including Idibera , Idibergu , or the family name Idiberung . The first three letters of the Elder Futhark, ᚠ (f), ᚢ (u) and ᚦ (th), are also found on the stone. The longest known inscription in the Elder Futhark, and one of the youngest, consists of some 200 characters, is found on the Eggjum stone , dated to

546-598: A population of several hundred active literati throughout the period, with as many as 1,600 during the Alamannic "runic boom" of the 6th century. After Looijenga 1997 , Lüthi 2004 . The Elder Futhark is encoded in Unicode within the unified Runic range, 16A0–16FF. Among the freely available TrueType fonts that include this range are Junicode and FreeMono . The Kylver Stone row encoded in Unicode reads: Encoded separately are

637-469: A putative meaning "wave/flame-guest, from a bog, alu , I, oath-sayer consecrate/fight". The obscurity even of emended readings is typical for runic inscriptions that go beyond simple personal names). A term frequently found in early inscriptions is Erilaz , apparently describing a person with knowledge of runes. The oldest known runic inscription dates to 160 and is found on the Vimose Comb discovered in

728-606: A runic alphabet, running right to left with a T and a D closer to the Latin or Etruscan than to the Bolzano or runic alphabets. Perhaps an "eclectic" approach can yield the best results for the explanation of the origin of the runes: most shapes of the letters can be accounted for when deriving them from several distinct North Italic writing systems: The p rune has a parallel in the Camunic alphabet, while it has been argued that d derives from

819-497: A single Unicode glyph are those that coincidentally look exactly like another rune, e.g. the double ᛚ bindrune is visually identical to ᛏ . Scandinavia Nordic territories that are not part of Scandinavia: Chronological history Scandinavia is a subregion of Northern Europe , with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. Scandinavia most commonly refers to Denmark , Norway , and Sweden . It can sometimes also refer to

910-560: A valley in the Central Alps . The language is sparsely attested to an extent that makes any classification attempt uncertain—even the discussion of whether it should be considered a pre–Indo-European or an Indo-European language has remained indecisive. Among several suggestions, it has been hypothesized that Camunic is related to the Raetic language from the Tyrsenian language family , or to

1001-569: A visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism. In a letter describing the poem to a friend, he wrote: "All at once I understood how related the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians are, and with this feeling I wrote the poem immediately after my return: 'We are one people, we are called Scandinavians! ' ". The influence of Scandinavism as a Scandinavist political movement peaked in

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1092-734: Is 38.0 °C in Målilla (Sweden). The coldest temperature ever recorded is −52.6 °C in Vuoggatjålme , Arjeplog (Sweden). The coldest month was February 1985 in Vittangi (Sweden) with a mean of −27.2 °C. Southwesterly winds further warmed by foehn wind can give warm temperatures in narrow Norwegian fjords in winter. Tafjord has recorded 17.9 °C in January and Sunndal 18.9 °C in February. The words Scandinavia and Scania ( Skåne ,

1183-567: Is Finnish (usually from the 3rd grade), while for Finnish-speakers it is Swedish (usually from the 3rd, 5th or 7th grade). Finnish speakers constitute a language minority in Sweden and Norway. Meänkieli and Kven are Finnish dialects spoken in Swedish Lapland and Norwegian Lapland . The Sámi languages are indigenous minority languages in Scandinavia. They belong to their own branch of

1274-514: Is a phonotactic structure of alien origin. Although the term Scandinavia used by Pliny the Elder probably originated in the ancient Germanic languages, the modern form Scandinavia does not descend directly from the ancient Germanic term. Rather the word was brought into use in Europe by scholars borrowing the term from ancient sources like Pliny, and was used vaguely for Scania and the southern region of

1365-407: Is also due to the fact that that Swedish was the dominant language when Finland was part of Sweden. Finnish-speakers had to learn Swedish in order to advance to higher positions. Swedish spoken in today's Finland includes a lot of words that are borrowed from Finnish, whereas the written language remains closer to that of Sweden. Finland is officially bilingual, with Finnish and Swedish having mostly

1456-579: Is based on the degree of mutual comprehensibility between the languages in the two branches. The populations of the Scandinavian countries, with common Scandinavian roots in language, can—at least with some training—understand each other's standard languages as they appear in print and are heard on radio and television. The reason Danish, Swedish and the two official written versions of Norwegian ( Nynorsk and Bokmål ) are traditionally viewed as different languages, rather than dialects of one common language,

1547-547: Is because they have two official written standards, in addition to the habit of strongly holding on to local dialects. The people of Stockholm , Sweden and Copenhagen , Denmark have the greatest difficulty in understanding other Scandinavian languages. In the Faroe Islands and Iceland, learning Danish is mandatory. This causes Faroese people as well as Icelandic people to become bilingual in two very distinct North Germanic languages, making it relatively easy for them to understand

1638-555: Is different from usage in the Scandinavian languages themselves (which use Scandinavia in the narrow meaning), and by the fact that the question of whether a country belongs to Scandinavia is politicised. People from the Nordic world beyond Norway, Denmark and Sweden may be offended at being either included in or excluded from the category of "Scandinavia". Nordic countries is used unambiguously for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, including their associated territories Greenland,

1729-556: Is found on the Kylver Stone in Gotland , [ᚠ] and [ᚹ] only partially inscribed but widely authenticated: Two instances of another early inscription were found on the two Vadstena and Mariedamm bracteates (6th century), showing the division in three ætts, with the positions of ï , p and o , d inverted compared to the Kylver stone: The Grumpan bracteate presents a listing from 500 which

1820-563: Is identical to the one found on the previous bracteates but incomplete: The Elder Futhark runes are commonly believed to originate in the Old Italic scripts : either a North Italic variant ( Etruscan or Rhaetic alphabets ), or the Latin alphabet itself. Derivation from the Greek alphabet via Gothic contact to Byzantine Greek culture was a popular theory in the 19th century, but has been ruled out since

1911-466: Is ordinarily used locally for Denmark, Norway and Sweden as a subset of the Nordic countries (known in Norwegian, Danish , and Swedish as Norden ; Finnish : Pohjoismaat , Icelandic : Norðurlöndin , Faroese : Norðurlond ). However, in English usage, the term Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym or near-synonym for what are known locally as Nordic countries . Usage in English

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2002-649: Is still a hotly debated issue, both in scholarly discussions and in the nationalistic discourse of various European countries. The form Scadinavia as the original home of the Langobards appears in Paul the Deacon ' Historia Langobardorum , but in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms Scadan , Scandanan , Scadanan and Scatenauge . Frankish sources used Sconaowe and Aethelweard , an Anglo-Saxon historian, used Scani . In Beowulf ,

2093-659: Is that each is a well-established standard language in its respective country. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have since medieval times been influenced to varying degrees by Middle Low German and standard German. That influence was due not only to proximity, but also to the rule of Denmark—and later Denmark-Norway—over the German-speaking region of Holstein, and to Sweden's close trade with the Hanseatic League . Norwegians are accustomed to variation and may perceive Danish and Swedish only as slightly more distant dialects. This

2184-634: Is that it represented a front vowel. Old Futhark inscriptions were found on artifacts scattered between the Carpathians and Lappland , with the highest concentration in Denmark . They are usually short inscriptions on jewelry ( bracteates , fibulae , belt buckles), utensils (combs, spinning whorls) or weapons (lance tips, seaxes ) and were mostly found in graves or bogs. Words frequently appearing in inscriptions on bracteates with possibly magical significance are alu , laþu and laukaz . While their meaning

2275-479: Is unclear, alu has been associated with "ale, intoxicating drink", in a context of ritual drinking , and laukaz with "leek, garlic", in a context of fertility and growth. An example of a longer early inscription is on a 4th-century axe-handle found in Nydam, Jutland : wagagastiz / alu:??hgusikijaz:aiþalataz ( wagagastiz "wave-guest" could be a personal name, the rest has been read as alu:wihgu sikijaz:aiþalataz with

2366-572: The Celtic languages . The extant corpus is carved on rock. There are at least 170 known inscriptions, the majority of which are only a few words long. The writing system used is a variant of the north-Etruscan alphabet , known as the Camunian alphabet or alphabet of Sondrio . Longer inscriptions show that Camunic writing used boustrophedon . Its name derives from the people of the Camunni , who lived during

2457-510: The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . A key ancient description of Scandinavia was provided by Pliny the Elder , though his mentions of Scatinavia and surrounding areas are not always easy to decipher. Writing in the capacity of a Roman admiral, he introduces the northern region by declaring to his Roman readers that there are 23 islands "Romanis armis cognitae" ("known to Roman arms") in this area. According to Pliny,

2548-472: The Gothic alphabet (recorded by Alcuin in the 9th century). Therefore, it is assumed that the names go back to the Elder Futhark period, at least to the 5th century. There is no positive evidence that the full row of 24 runes had been completed before the end of the 4th century, but it is likely that at least some runes had their name before that time. This concerns primarily the runes used magically , especially

2639-624: The Icelanders and the Faroese . The term is also used in this ethnic sense, to refer to the modern descendants of the Norse, in studies of linguistics and culture. Additionally the term Scandinavian is used demonymically to refer to all modern inhabitants or citizens of Scandinavian countries. Within Scandinavia the demonymic term primarily refers to inhabitants or citizens of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In English usage inhabitants or citizens of Iceland,

2730-586: The Iron Age in Valcamonica and were the creators of many of the stone carvings in the area. Abecedariums found in Nadro and Piancogno have been dated to between 500 BC and 50 AD. The amount of material is insufficient to fully decipher the language. Some scholars think it may be related to Raetic and to Etruscan , but it is considered premature to make such affiliation. Other scholars suggest that Camunic could be

2821-459: The Meldorf inscription of 50 may qualify as "proto-runic" use of the Latin alphabet by Germanic speakers. The Raetic " alphabet of Bolzano " in particular seems to fit the letter shapes well. The spearhead of Kovel , dated to 200 AD, sometimes advanced as evidence of a peculiar Gothic variant of the runic alphabet, bears an inscription tilarids that may in fact be in an Old Italic rather than

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2912-517: The Roman Empire and their conversion to Christianity . In this early period, there is no specifically West Germanic runic tradition. This changes from the early 6th century, and for about one century (520 to 620), an Alamannic "runic province" emerges, with examples on fibulae, weapon parts and belt buckles. As in the East Germanic case, use of runes subsides with Christianization, in the case of

3003-613: The Scandinavian Peninsula (which excludes Denmark but includes a part of northern Finland ). In English usage, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for Nordic countries . Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes included in Scandinavia for their ethnolinguistic relations with Sweden, Norway and Denmark. While Finland differs from other Nordic countries in this respect, some authors call it Scandinavian due to its economic and cultural similarities. The geography of

3094-574: The Scandinavian Peninsula since prehistory—the North Germanic languages (Scandinavian languages) and the Uralic languages , Sámi and Finnish . Most people in Scandinavia today speak Scandinavian languages that evolved from Old Norse , originally spoken by ancient Germanic tribes in southern Scandinavia. The Continental Scandinavian languages— Danish , Norwegian and Swedish —form a dialect continuum and are considered mutually intelligible. The Insular Scandinavian languages— Faroese and Icelandic —on

3185-693: The Sámi people in northern Scandinavia. The North Germanic languages of Scandinavia are traditionally divided into an East Scandinavian branch (Danish and Swedish) and a West Scandinavian branch (Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese), but because of changes appearing in the languages since 1600 the East Scandinavian and West Scandinavian branches are now usually reconfigured into Insular Scandinavian ( ö-nordisk / øy-nordisk ) featuring Icelandic and Faroese and Continental Scandinavian ( Skandinavisk ), comprising Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. The modern division

3276-685: The Teiwaz and Ansuz runes which are taken to symbolize or invoke deities in sequences such as that on the Lindholm amulet (3rd or 4th century). Reconstructed names in Common Germanic can easily be given for most runes. Exceptions are the þ rune (which is given different names in Anglo-Saxon, Gothic and Scandinavian traditions) and the z rune (whose original name is unknown, and preserved only in corrupted form from Old English tradition). The 24 Elder Futhark runes are: Each rune derived its sound from

3367-431: The Uralic language family and are unrelated to the North Germanic languages other than by limited grammatical (particularly lexical) characteristics resulting from prolonged contact. Sámi is divided into several languages or dialects. Consonant gradation is a feature in both Finnish and northern Sámi dialects, but it is not present in southern Sámi, which is considered to have a different language history. According to

3458-433: The classical Latin alphabet (1st century, ignoring marginalized K ). There are conflicting scholarly opinions regarding them: Of the 24 runes in the classical futhark row attested from 400AD ( Kylver stone ), ï , p and ŋ are unattested in the earliest inscriptions of c. 175 to 400, while e in this early period mostly takes a Π-shape, its M-shape ( [REDACTED] ) gaining prevalence only from

3549-460: The "clarissima" ("most famous") of the region's islands is Scatinavia , of unknown size. There live the Hilleviones . The belief that Scandinavia was an island became widespread among classical authors during the 1st century and dominated descriptions of Scandinavia in classical texts during the centuries that followed. Pliny begins his description of the route to Scatinavia by referring to

3640-435: The 5th century. Similarly, the s rune may have either three ( [REDACTED] ) or four ( [REDACTED] ) strokes (and more rarely five or more), and only from the 5th century does the variant with three strokes become prevalent. The "mature" runes of the 6th to 8th centuries tend to have only three directions of strokes, the vertical and two diagonal directions. Early inscriptions also show horizontal strokes: these appear in

3731-711: The 6th century, with transitional examples like the Björketorp or Stentoften stones. In the early 9th century, both the older and the younger futhark were known and used, which is shown on the Rök runestone where the runemaster used both. The oldest known runestone, the Svingerud Runestone , dates to the Roman Iron Age, c. 1–250 CE, and was found in Ringerike, Norway, in autumn 2021. The inscription has several sections, notably

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3822-558: The Alamanni in the course of the 7th century. There are some 350 known Elder Futhark inscriptions with 81 known inscriptions from the South (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and 267 from Scandinavia. The precise numbers are debatable because of some suspected forgeries, and some disputed inscriptions (identification as "runes" vs. accidental scratches, simple ornaments or Latin letters). 133 Scandinavian inscriptions are on bracteates (compared to 2 from

3913-478: The English digraph - th -). ï is also transliterated as æ and may have been either a diphthong or a vowel close to [ ɪ ] or [ æ ] . z was Proto-Germanic [z] , and evolved into Proto-Norse /r₂/ and is also transliterated as ʀ . The remaining transliterations correspond to the IPA symbol of their approximate value. The earliest known sequential listing of the alphabet dates to A.D. 400 and

4004-519: The Faroe Islands and Finland are sometimes included as well. English general dictionaries often define the noun Scandinavian demonymically as meaning any inhabitant of Scandinavia (which might be narrowly conceived or broadly conceived). There is a certain ambiguity and political contestation as to which peoples should be referred to as Scandinavian in this broader sense. Sámi people who live in Norway and Sweden are generally included as Scandinavians in

4095-674: The Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands. The geological term Fennoscandia (sometimes Fennoscandinavia ) refers to the Fennoscandian Shield (or Baltic Shield ), which includes the Scandinavian Peninsula, Finland and Karelia , and excludes Denmark and other parts of the wider Nordic world. The terms Fennoscandia and Fennoscandinavia are sometimes used in a political sense to refer to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. The term Scandinavian may be used with two principal meanings, in an ethnic or cultural sense and as

4186-519: The Finnish population. The coastal province of Ostrobothnia has a Swedish-speaking majority, whereas plenty of areas on this coastline are nearly unilingually Finnish, like the region of Satakunta . Åland, an autonomous province of Finland situated in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, are entirely Swedish-speaking. Children are taught the other official language at school: for Swedish-speakers this

4277-709: The Netherlands) associated with the Saxons and Frisians on one hand (part of the "North Germanic Koine "), and loosely scattered finds from along the Oder to south-eastern Poland, as far as the Carpathian Mountains (e.g. the ring of Pietroassa in Romania), associated with East Germanic peoples. The latter group disappeared during the 5th century at the time of contact of the Goths with

4368-556: The Russian Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 and Norway ( de jure in union with Denmark since 1387, although de facto treated as a province) becoming independent in 1814, but thereafter swiftly forced to accept a personal union with Sweden. The dependent territories Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, historically part of Norway, remained with Denmark in accordance with the Treaty of Kiel . Sweden and Norway were thus united under

4459-498: The South), and 65 are on runestones (no Southern example is extant). Southern inscriptions are predominantly on fibulae (43, compared to 15 in Scandinavia). The Scandinavian runestones belong to the later period of the Elder Futhark, and initiate the boom of medieval Younger Futhark stones (with some 6,000 surviving examples). As of 2021, one inscription was found in a settlement associated with Slavs . Elder Futhark inscriptions were rare, with very few active literati, in relation to

4550-447: The Swedish king Gustav I led Sweden to independence. It also saw numerous wars between the nations, which shaped the modern borders. The most recent union was the union between Sweden and Norway , which ended in 1905. In modern times the region has prospered, with the economies of the countries being amongst the strongest in Europe. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland all maintain welfare systems considered to be generous, with

4641-485: The Swedish monarch, but Finland's inclusion in the Russian Empire excluded any possibility for a political union between Finland and any of the other Nordic countries. The end of the Scandinavian political movement came when Denmark was denied the military support promised from Sweden and Norway to annex the (Danish) Duchy of Schleswig , which together with the (German) Duchy of Holstein had been in personal union with Denmark. The Second war of Schleswig followed in 1864,

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4732-533: The Sámi Information Centre of the Sámi Parliament of Sweden , southern Sámi may have originated in an earlier migration from the south into the Scandinavian Peninsula. German is a recognized minority language in Denmark. Recent migrations has added even more languages. Apart from the Sámi languages and the languages of minority groups speaking a variant of the majority language of a neighboring state, Yiddish , Romani Chib/Romanes, Scandoromani and Karelian are amongst those protected in parts of Scandinavia under

4823-412: The bog of Vimose , Funen . The inscription reads harja , either a personal name or an epithet, viz. Proto-Germanic *harjaz ( PIE *koryos ) " warrior ", or simply the word for "comb" ( *hārijaz ). Another early inscription is found on the Thorsberg chape (200), probably containing the theonym Ullr . The typically Scandinavian runestones begin to show the transition to Younger Futhark from

4914-482: The case of e (mentioned above), but also in t , l , ŋ and h . The general agreement dates the creation of the first runic alphabet to roughly the 1st century. Early estimates include the 1st century, and late estimates push the date into the 2nd century. The question is one of estimating the "findless" period separating the script's creation from the Vimose finds of c. 160. If either ï or z indeed derive from Latin Y or Z , as suggested by Odenstedt,

5005-419: The dating of the Vimose inscriptions to the 2nd century (whereas the Goths were in contact with Greek culture only from the early 3rd century). Conversely, the Greek-derived 4th-century Gothic alphabet does have two letters derived from runes, [REDACTED] (from Jer [REDACTED] j ) and [REDACTED] (from Uruz [REDACTED] u ). The angular shapes of the runes, presumably an adaptation to

5096-408: The demonymic sense; the Sámi of Finland may be included in English usage, but usually not in local usage; the Sámi of Russia are not included. However, the use of the term "Scandinavian" with reference to the Sámi is complicated by the historical attempts by Scandinavian majority peoples and governments in Norway and Sweden to assimilate the Sámi people into the Scandinavian culture and languages, making

5187-499: The double-barred h -rune, ᚻ and a graphical variant of the ng -rune, ᛝ . These two have separate codepoints because they become independent characters in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc . The numerous other graphical variants of Elder Futhark runes are considered glyph variants better rendered by the use of different fonts and so not given Unicode codepoints. Similarly, bind runes are considered ligatures and not given Unicode codepoints. The only bindrunes that can arguably be rendered as

5278-408: The early 8th century, and may even contain a stanza of Old Norse poetry . The Caistor-by-Norwich astragalus reading raïhan "deer" is notable as the oldest inscription of the British Isles, dating to 400, the very end of Roman Britain . The oldest inscriptions (before 500) found on the Continent are divided into two groups, the area of the North Sea coast and Northern Germany (including parts of

5369-502: The economic and social policies of the countries being dubbed the " Nordic model ". The geography of Scandinavia is extremely varied. Notable are the Norwegian fjords , the Scandinavian Mountains covering much of Norway and parts of Sweden, the flat, low areas in Denmark and the archipelagos of Finland, Norway and Sweden. Finland and Sweden have many lakes and moraines , legacies of the ice age , which ended about ten millennia ago. The southern regions of Scandinavia, which are also

5460-420: The first Europeans to reach North America. These exploits saw the establishment of the North Sea Empire which comprised large parts of Scandinavia and Great Britain, though it was relatively short-lived. Scandinavia was eventually Christianized , and the coming centuries saw various unions of Scandinavian nations, most notably the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which lasted for over 100 years until

5551-485: The first century BC is ruled out, because these letters were only introduced into the Latin alphabet during the reign of Augustus . Other scholars are content to assume a findless period of a few decades, pushing the date into the early 2nd century. Pedersen (and with him Odenstedt) suggests a period of development of about a century to account for their assumed derivation of the shapes of þ [REDACTED] and j [REDACTED] from Latin D and G . The invention of

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5642-460: The first phoneme of the rune's respective name, with the exception of Ingwaz and Algiz : the Proto-Germanic z sound of the Algiz rune never occurred in a word-initial position. The phoneme acquired an r -like quality in Proto-Norse, usually transliterated with ʀ , and finally merged with r in Icelandic, rendering the rune superfluous as a letter. Similarly, the ng -sound of the Ingwaz rune does not occur word-initially. The names come from

5733-400: The forms Scedenige and Scedeland are used while the Alfredian translation of Orosius and Wulfstan 's travel accounts used the Old English Sconeg . The earliest Sámi joik texts written down refer to the world as Skadesi-suolu in Northern Sámi and Skađsuâl in Skolt Sámi , meaning " Skaði 's island". Svennung considers the Sámi name to have been introduced as

5824-401: The goddess Skaði may have once been a personification of the geographical region of Scandinavia or associated with the underworld. Another possibility is that all or part of the segments of the name came from the pre-Germanic Mesolithic people inhabiting the region. In modernity, Scandinavia is a peninsula, but between approximately 10,300 and 9,500 years ago the southern part of Scandinavia

5915-419: The incision in wood or metal, are not a Germanic innovation, but a property that is shared with other early alphabets, including the Old Italic ones (compare, for example, the Duenos inscription ). The 4th century BC Negau helmet inscription features a Germanic name, Harigastiz , in a North Etruscan alphabet, and may be a testimony of the earliest contact of Germanic speakers with alphabetic writing. Similarly,

6006-407: The inclusion of the Sámi as "Scandinavians" controversial among many Sámi. Modern Sámi politicians and organizations often stress the status of the Sámi as a people separate from and equal to the Scandinavians, with their own language and culture, and are apprehensive about being included as "Scandinavians" in light of earlier Scandinavian assimilation policies. Two language groups have coexisted on

6097-428: The language of the church and law courts remained Icelandic. The Scandinavian languages are (as a language family) unrelated to Finnish and the Sámi languages , which as Uralic languages are distantly related each other. Owing to the close proximity, there is still a great deal of borrowing from the Swedish and Norwegian languages in Finnish and the Sámi. The long history of linguistic influence of Swedish on Finnish

6188-422: The middle of the 19th century, between the First Schleswig War (1848–1850) and the Second Schleswig War (1864). The Swedish king also proposed a unification of Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a single united kingdom. The background for the proposal was the tumultuous events during the Napoleonic Wars in the beginning of the century. This war resulted in Finland (formerly the eastern third of Sweden) becoming

6279-399: The most populous regions, have a temperate climate . Scandinavia extends north of the Arctic Circle , but has relatively mild weather for its latitude due to the Gulf Stream . Many of the Scandinavian mountains have an alpine tundra climate. The climate varies from north to south and from west to east: a marine west coast climate ( Cfb ) typical of western Europe dominates in Denmark,

6370-433: The mountain of Saevo ( mons Saevo ibi ), the Codanus Bay ("Codanus sinus") and the Cimbrian promontory. The geographical features have been identified in various ways. By some scholars, Saevo is thought to be the mountainous Norwegian coast at the entrance to Skagerrak and the Cimbrian peninsula is thought to be Skagen , the north tip of Jutland , Denmark. As described, Saevo and Scatinavia can also be

6461-477: The northwestern coast. A small area along the northern coast east of the North Cape has tundra climate (Et) as a result of a lack of summer warmth. The Scandinavian Mountains block the mild and moist air coming from the southwest, thus northern Sweden and the Finnmarksvidda plateau in Norway receive little precipitation and have cold winters. Large areas in the Scandinavian mountains have alpine tundra climate. The warmest temperature ever recorded in Scandinavia

6552-415: The old Sámi belief about living on an island and state that the wolf is known as suolu gievra , meaning "the strong one on the island". The Sámi place name Sulliidčielbma means "the island's threshold" and Suoločielgi means "the island's back". In recent substrate studies, Sámi linguists have examined the initial cluster sk - in words used in the Sámi languages and concluded that sk -

6643-540: The other are only partially intelligible to speakers of the continental Scandinavian languages. The Uralic languages are linguistically unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. Finnish is the majority language in Finland, and a recognized minority language in Sweden. Meänkieli and Kven , sometimes considered as dialects of Finnish, are recognized minority languages in Sweden and Norway, respectively. The Sámi languages are indigenous minority languages in Scandinavia, spoken by

6734-519: The other two Mainland Scandinavian languages. Although Iceland was under the political control of Denmark until a much later date (1918), very little influence and borrowing from Danish has occurred in the Icelandic language. Icelandic remained the preferred language among the ruling classes in Iceland. Danish was not used for official communications, most of the royal officials were of Icelandic descent and

6825-428: The peninsula. The term was popularised by the linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement , which asserted the common heritage and cultural unity of the Scandinavian countries and rose to prominence in the 1830s. The popular usage of the term in Sweden, Denmark and Norway as a unifying concept became established in the 19th century through poems such as Hans Christian Andersen 's "I am a Scandinavian" of 1839. After

6916-455: The principle of acrophony . The Old English names of all 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, along with five names of runes unique to the Anglo-Saxon runes , are preserved in the Old English rune poem , compiled in the 7th century. These names are in good agreement with medieval Scandinavian records of the names of the 16 Younger Futhark runes, and to some extent also with those of the letters of

7007-568: The region can also be found in Pytheas , Pomponius Mela , Tacitus , Ptolemy , Procopius and Jordanes , usually in the form of Scandza . It is believed that the name used by Pliny may be of West Germanic origin, originally denoting Scania. According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as * skaðan- , meaning "danger" or "damage". The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as * awjō , meaning "land on

7098-642: The region is varied, from the Norwegian fjords in the west and Scandinavian mountains covering parts of Norway and Sweden, to the low and flat areas of Denmark in the south, as well as archipelagos and lakes in the east. Most of the population in the region live in the more temperate southern regions, with the northern parts having long, cold winters. The region became notable during the Viking Age , when Scandinavian peoples participated in large-scale raiding, conquest, colonization and trading mostly throughout Europe. They also used their longships for exploration, becoming

7189-523: The same place. Pliny mentions Scandinavia one more time: in Book VIII he says that the animal called achlis (given in the accusative, achlin , which is not Latin) was born on the island of Scandinavia. The animal grazes, has a big upper lip and some mythical attributes. Camunic language The Camunic language is an extinct language that was spoken in the 1st millennium BC in Val Camonica ,

7280-563: The same status at national level. Finland's majority population are Finns , whose mother tongue is either Finnish (approximately 95%), Swedish or both. The Swedish-speakers live mainly on the coastline starting from approximately the city of Porvoo (Sw: Borgå) (in the Gulf of Finland) up to the city of Kokkola (Sw: Karleby) (in the Bay of Bothnia). The Swedish-speaking population is spread out in pockets in this coastal stretch and constitutes approximately 5% of

7371-458: The script has been ascribed to a single person or a group of people who had come into contact with Roman culture, maybe as mercenaries in the Roman army, or as merchants. The script was clearly designed for epigraphic purposes, but opinions differ in stressing either magical, practical or simply playful ( graffiti ) aspects. Bæksted 1952 , p. 134 concludes that in its earliest stage, the runic script

7462-685: The shape of the letter san (= ś ) in Lepontic where it seems to represent the sound /d/. The g , a , f , i , t , m and l runes show no variation, and are generally accepted as identical to the Old Italic or Latin letters X , A , F , I , T , M and L , respectively. There is also wide agreement that the u , r , k , h , s , b and o runes respectively correspond directly to V , R , C , H , S , B and O . The remaining ten runes of uncertain derivation may either be original innovations, or adaptions of otherwise unneeded Latin letters of

7553-406: The southernmost part of Sweden and along the west coast of Norway reaching north to 65°N, with orographic lift giving more mm/year precipitation (<5000 mm) in some areas in western Norway. The central part – from Oslo to Stockholm – has a humid continental climate (Dfb), which gradually gives way to subarctic climate (Dfc) further north and cool marine west coast climate (Cfc) along

7644-528: The southernmost province of Sweden) are both thought to go back to the Proto-Germanic compound * Skaðin-awjō (the ð represented in Latin by t or d ), which appears later in Old English as Scedenig and in Old Norse as Skáney . The earliest identified source for the name Scandinavia is Pliny the Elder 's Natural History , dated to the 1st century AD. Various references to

7735-561: The total population, at any time, so that knowledge of the runes was probably an actual "secret" throughout the Migration period. Of 366 lances excavated at Illerup , only 2 bore inscriptions. A similar ratio is estimated for Alemannia, with an estimated 170 excavated graves to every inscription found. Estimates of the total number of inscriptions produced are based on the "minimal runological estimate" of 40,000 (ten individuals making ten inscriptions per year for four centuries). The actual number

7826-434: The vocabulary of daily life and mythology, some trivial, some beneficent and some inauspicious: The following charts show the probable sound values of each rune based upon Proto-Germanic phonology . ᛇ has been excluded from the table because what its sound might have been is highly disputed. It may have been a diphthong, or it may have been a monophthong falling somewhere within the range of [ɪ] to [æ]. The only certain fact

7917-575: The water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to refer to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania. Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem ( skan ) combined with - ör , which means "sandbanks". Alternatively, Sca(n)dinavia and Skáney , along with the Old Norse goddess name Skaði , may be related to Proto-Germanic * skaðwa- (meaning "shadow"). John McKinnell comments that this etymology suggests that

8008-463: Was an "artificial, playful, not really needed imitation of the Roman script ", much like the Germanic bracteates were directly influenced by Roman currency, a view that is accepted by Odenstedt 1990 , p. 171 in the light of the very primitive nature of the earliest (2nd to 4th century) inscription corpus. Each rune most probably had a name, chosen to represent the sound of the rune itself according to

8099-560: Was an island separated from the northern peninsula, with water exiting the Baltic Sea through the area where Stockholm is now located. The Latin names in Pliny's text gave rise to different forms in medieval Germanic texts. In Jordanes' history of the Goths (AD 551), the form Scandza is the name used for their original home, separated by sea from the land of Europe (chapter 1, 4). Where Jordanes meant to locate this quasi-legendary island

8190-491: Was deciphered by Norwegian scholar Sophus Bugge . The Elder Futhark (named after the initial phoneme of the first six rune names: F, U, Þ, A, R and K) has 24 runes, often arranged in three groups of eight runes; each group is called an ætt (pl. ættir ; meaning ' clan, group ', although sometimes thought to mean eight). In the following table, each rune is given with its common transliteration : þ corresponds to [ θ ] (unvoiced) or [ ð ] (voiced) (like

8281-486: Was probably considerably higher. The 80 known Southern inscriptions are from some 100,000 known graves. With an estimated total of 50,000,000 graves (based on population density estimates), some 80,000 inscriptions would have been produced in total in the Merovingian South alone (and maybe close to 400,000 in total, so that of the order of 0.1% of the corpus has come down to us), and Fischer 2004 , p. 281 estimates

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